Paris was silent, but it wasn’t peace.The fires had gone out days ago, yet the city still carried the stink of ash and gasoline. Broken glass glittered in the gutters like jewels of a fallen empire. The streets below the safehouse lay empty, save for the occasional siren or the distant thunder of boots from soldiers too tired to keep order but too afraid to abandon it completely.Ethan stood on the balcony, drinking it in. He couldn’t stop staring at the ruin, not because of what Paris had lost but because of what he had gained. His left hand still burned, branded with the sigil that now pulsed like it had a heartbeat of its own. The Crown Cipher. The mark of kings—and monsters.He flexed his fingers. Each movement drew heat and fire through his veins, the memory of Helena’s ritual carved into his nerves. Sleep had become impossible. Every time he shut his eyes, something else flooded his head—not his thoughts, not his past, but memories borrowed from the dead. Cain’s battles. Helena

The safehouse breathed in silence after Cain’s boots faded down the stairwell. A silence too sharp to be peace—one stitched from exhaustion, fear, and things left unsaid.Ethan sat hunched on the edge of the narrow mattress, his wrists raw from restraints. Wren crouched beside him with soldierly efficiency, tearing strips from a linen shirt and binding them tightly around the angry welts. Her touch was practical, almost brusque, but Camille noticed the way her hands lingered just long enough to steady him when his body swayed.Ethan didn’t flinch. His eyes—those storm-dark eyes that had once sparked with cleverness—were fixed on the faint sigil burned into his skin. The Cipher’s mark pulsed faintly like a heartbeat, like a wound that would never scab over. His jaw was clenched, his chest rising and falling in shallow rhythms, but the real battle was behind his eyes.Camille stood at a distance, her back pressed against the cold plaster wall. Watching. Waiting. Guilt gnawed at her ribs

The morning broke over Paris like a bruise—gray, swollen, ugly. The rain that had fallen through the night still clung to the gutters, dripping in slow, deliberate rhythm, as though the city itself was bleeding from a wound it couldn’t close. Ethan sat on the floor of the safehouse bedroom, his back against the wall, staring at the half-empty glass of water by his bed. He hadn’t slept. His eyes burned with exhaustion, but every time his lids closed, he saw Wren’s scars carved into memory. He heard again the sharp slap of her hand as she pushed his touch away. He heard the unspoken words: Don’t try to save what you don’t understand. The silence was heavy, broken only by the steady tick of the radiator. Ethan wanted to sink into it, but the Cipher wouldn’t let him. The brand etched into his hand pulsed faintly, a reminder that Cain’s shadow reached further than flesh, that even solitude wasn’t his own. He didn’t need to wait long. There was no knock. Cain never knocked. He entere

The riad in Marrakech still smelled of smoke and blood, no matter how hard the servants scrubbed. The marble tiles had been wiped until they gleamed wet in the lantern light, but the iron tang lingered, clinging to the walls like a curse. Even the orange blossoms in the courtyard—usually sweet, intoxicating—couldn’t mask it.Ethan sat hunched on a stone bench by the fountain. The trickling water sounded hollow against the quiet, mocking the stillness that hung in the air. His side throbbed where the stitches pulled against torn flesh. Camille had patched him up, but the wound burned, a reminder of every mistake he’d made in that firefight.The courtyard felt cavernous despite its intimacy. Wren stood framed in the far archway, her arms crossed, one shoulder pressed to the carved plaster. Lantern light carved harsh shadows across her cheekbones, turning her face into something severe, almost statuesque. She hadn’t spoken since the fight.Camille hovered near the fountain, tablet in han

The night in Marrakech spread like velvet over the city, cool air threaded with the perfume of orange blossoms and the faint spice of street markets that still hummed in the distance. From the rooftop of the riad, Ethan could see the city sprawled below like a patchwork of firefly lanterns, minarets stabbing the sky, the Atlas Mountains brooding on the horizon. But none of it touched him. The words Cain had flung at him earlier kept circling, venomous, impossible to dislodge.Wren should be my heir instead.It was meant as a wound, and it worked. Ethan had felt the words burn down his spine like a brand, heavier than the Cipher whispering in his veins. He’d walked the riad’s corridors like a ghost until his feet had carried him upward, toward the one place he both dreaded and needed to be: Wren.He found her on the rooftop.She sat balanced on the parapet like a statue carved from shadow and moonlight, her posture straight but somehow weary, the kind of weariness that never went away.